Lost Lands of Witch World Read online

  Estcarp’s answer was loosing of the Sulcar fleets. And that did give Pagar to think. Hostovrul gathered twenty ships, rode out a storm by spectacular seamanship, and broke the river patrol, to raid into Kars itself, with such success that he left the new Duke unsteady for another full year. And then there was an insurrection in the south whence Pagar had come, led by his own half-brother, to keep the Duke further engaged. Thus three years, maybe more, were won from the threat of chaos, and the twilight of Estcarp did not slide into night as quickly as the Old Race had feared.

  During these years of maneuvering the three of us were taken from the fortress of our birth—but not to Es, for both our father and mother held aloof from the city where the Council reigned. The Lady Loyse established a home in a small manor-garth of Etsford, and welcomed us into her household. Anghart was still the center of our lives, and she made an acceptable alliance with the mistress of Etsford based on mutual regard and respect. For the Lady Loyse had adventured, disguised as a blank shield mercenary, into the heart of enemy territory when she and my mother had been ranged against all the might of Kars and Duke Yvian.

  Upon her long delayed recovery the Lady Jaelithe assumed once more her duties with my father as vice-warder. Together they had control of the Power, not after the same fashion as the Witches, but in another way. And I know now that the Witches were both jealous and suspicious of the gift so shared, though it was used only for the good of the Old Race and Estcarp. The Wise Ones found such talent unnatural in a man and secretly always reckoned my mother the less because of her uniting with Simon. At this time the Council appeared to have no interest in us children. In fact their attitude might be more termed a deliberate ignoring of our existence. Kaththea was not subjected to examination for inherited Power talent as were all girls of the Old Race before they were six.

  I do not remember my mother much from those years. She would descend upon the manor, trailed by fighters from the Border forces—of much greater interest to me, for my first crawl across the floor took me to lay a baby’s hand on the polished hilt of a sword. Her visits were very few, my father’s even less; they could not often be spared from the patrol along the south border. We turned to Anghart for all answers to childish problems, and held the Lady Loyse in affection. To our mother was given respect and awe, and our father had much the same recognition. He was not a man who was easy with children, I believe, and perhaps he unconsciously held against us the suffering our birth had caused his wife who was the one person he held extremely dear.

  If we did not have a closeknit relationship with our parents, we made up for that with a tight bond among the three of us. Yet in nature we were different. As my mother had wished, I was first a warrior, that being my approach to life. Kemoc was a thinker—presented with any problem his was not the response of outright and immediate action, but rather a considered examination and inquiry into its nature. Very early he began his questions, and when he found no one could give him all the answers he wished, he strove to discover the learning which would.

  Kaththea felt the deeper. She had a great oneness, not only with us, but things about us—animals, people, even the countryside. Oftentimes her instinct topped my force of action or Kemoc’s considered reasoning.

  I cannot remember the first time we realized that we, too, possessed a gift of the Power. We need not be together, or even miles close, to be in communication. And when the need was we seemed a single person—I the arms for action, Kemoc the brain, Kaththea the heart and controlled emotion. But some wariness kept us from revealing this to those about us. Though I do not doubt that Anghart was well aware of our so-knitted strength.

  We were about six when Kemoc and I were given small, specially forged swords, dart guns suited to our child hands, and began the profession of arms which all of the Old Race must follow during this eventide. Our tutor was a Sulcarman, crippled in a sea fight, sent by our father to give us the best training possible. He was a master of most weapons, was Otkell, having been one of Hostovrul’s officers during the raid on Kars. Though neither of us took to the use of the axe, to Otkell’s disappointment, both Kemoc and I learned other weapon play with a rapidity which pleased our instructor; and he was not in any way easy with us.

  It was during the summer of our twelfth year that we rode on our first foray. By that time Pagar had reduced his unruly duchy to order and was prepared once more to try his luck north. The Sulcar fleet was raiding Alizon, his agents must have reported that. So he sent flying columns north through the mountains, in simultaneous clawing attacks at five different places.

  The Falconers took out one of these, the Borderers two more. But the remaining two bands made their way into valley land which the enemy had never reached before. Cut off from any retreat they fought like wild beasts, intent on inflicting all the damage they could before they were dragged down.

  So it was that a handful of these madmen reached Es River and captured a boat, putting her crew to the sword. They came downstream with some cunning, perhaps in a very vain hope of reaching the sea. But the hunt was up and a warship was in position at the river’s mouth to cut then off.

  They beached their stolen boat not five miles from Etsford and the whole of the manpower from the farms around turned out in a hunt. Otkell refused to take us along, an order we took in ill part. But the small force he led was not an hour gone when Kaththea intercepted a message. It came so sharply into her mind that she held her head and cried out as she stood between us on the watch walk of the center tower. It was a Witch sending, not aimed at a girl child a few miles away, but for one of the trained Old Race. And a portion of its demand for speedy aid reached us in turn through our sister.

  We did not question the rightness of our answer as we rode forth, having to take our horses by stealth. And there was no leaving Kaththea behind—not only was she our directional guide, but we three had become a larger one in that moment on the tower walk.

  Three children rode out of Etsford. But we were not ordinary children as we worked our way across country and approached a place where the wild wolves from Karsten had holed up with a captive for bargaining. Battle fortune does exist. We say this captain or that is a “lucky” man, for he loses few men, and is to be found at the right place at the right moment. Some of this is strategy and skill, intelligence and training serving as extra weapons. But other men equally well trained and endowed are never so favored by seeming chance. Battle fortune rode with us that day. For we found the wolves’ den, and we picked off the guards there—five of them, all trained and desperate fighters—so that a woman, bloodstained, bound, yet proud and unbending, came out alive.

  Her gray robe we knew. But her searching stare, her compelling measurement made us uneasy, and in some manner broke the oneness of our tie. Then I realized that she had dismissed Kemoc and me, and her attention was focused on Kaththea, and by that direct study we were all threatened. And, young as I was, I knew we had no defense against this peril.

  Otkell did not allow our breech of discipline to pass, in spite of our success. Kemoc and I bore body smarts which lasted a few days. But we were glad because the Witch was swiftly gone out of our lives again, having spent but a single night at Etsford.

  It was only much later, when we had lost the first battle of our personal struggle, that we learned what had followed upon that visit—that the Witches had ordered Kaththea to their testing and that our parents had refused, and that the Council had had to accept that refusal for a time. Though they were not in any way defeated by it. For the Witches never believed in hasty action and were willing to make time their ally.

  Time was to serve them so. Simon Tregarth put to sea two years later on a Sulcar ship, his purpose an inspection of certain islands reported newly fortified in a strange way by Alizon. There was a hint of possible Kolder revival there. Neither he nor his ship were heard from again.

  Since we had known so little of our father, his loss made small change in our lives—until our mother came to Etsford. This
time it was not for a short visit: she came with her personal escort to stay.

  She spoke little, looked out overmuch—not on the country, but to that which we could not see. For some months she shut herself up for hours at a time in one of the tower rooms, accompanied by the Lady Loyse. And from such periods the Lady Loyse would emerge whitefaced and stumbling, as if she had been drained of vital energy, while my mother grew thinner, her features sharper, her gaze more abstracted.

  Then one day she summoned the three of us into the tower room. There was a gloom in that place, even though three windows were open on a fine summer day. She gestured with a fingertip and curtains fell over two of those windows, as if the fabric obeyed her will, leaving open only that to the north. With a fingertip again she traced certain dimly-seen lines on the floor and they flared into flickering life, making a design. Then, without a word, she motioned us to stand on portions of that pattern while she tossed dried herbs on a small brazier. Smoke curled up and around to hide us each from the other. But in that moment we were instantly one again, as we had ever been when threatened.

  Then—it is hard to set this into words that can be understood by those who have not experienced it—we were aimed, sent, as one might shoot a dart or strike with a sword. And in that shooting I lost all sense of time, or distance, or identity. There was a purpose and a will and in that I was swallowed up beyond any protesting.

  Afterwards we stood again in that room, facing our mother—no longer a woman abstracted and remote, but alive. She held out her hands to us, and there were tears running down her sunken cheeks.

  “As we gave you life,” she said, “so have you returned that gift, oh, my children!”

  She took a small vial from the table and threw its contents upon the now dying coals in the brazier.

  There was a flash of fire and in that moved things. But the nature of them, or what they did, I could not say. They were gone again and I was blinking, no longer a part, but myself alone.

  Now my mother no longer smiled, but was intent. And that intentness was no longer concentrated upon her own concerns, but upon the three of us.

  “Thus it must be: I go my way, and you take another road. What I can do, I shall—believe that, my children! It is not the fault of any of us that our destiny is so riven apart. I am going to seek your father—for he still lives—elsewhere. You have another fate before you. Use what is bred in you and it shall be a sword which never breaks nor fails, a shield which will ever cover you. Perhaps, in the end, we shall find our separate roads are one after all. Which would be good fortune past all telling!”

  II

  It was thus that our mother rode out of our lives on a hot midsummer morning when the dust rose in yellow puffs under the hooves of the mounts and the sky was cloudless. We watched her go from the walk on the tower. Twice she looked back and up, and the last time she raised her hand in a warrior’s salute—to which Kemoc and I made fitting return in formal fashion, the brilliant sun mirroring on the blades of our drawn swords. But Kaththea, between us, shivered as if chill fingers of an outseason wind touched her. And Kemoc’s left hand sought hers, to cover it where fingers gripped the parapet.

  “I saw him,” she said, “when she drew upon us in the search—I saw him—all alone—there were rocks, tall rocks and curling water—” This time her shudder shook her whole thin frame.

  “Where?” Kemoc demanded.

  Our sister shook her head. “I cannot tell, but it was far—and more than distance of land and sea lies between.”

  “Not enough to keep her from the searching,” I said as I sheathed my sword. There was a sense of loss in me, but who can measure the loss of what one has never had? My mother and father dwelt inwardly together in a world they had made their own, unlike most other husbands and wives I had noted. To them that world was complete and all others were interlopers. There was no Power, good or evil, which could hold the Lady Jaelithe from her present quest as long as breath was in her. And had we offered aid in her search, she would have put us aside.

  “We are together.” Kemoc had picked my thought out of my skull, as was common with us.

  “For how long?” Again Kaththea shivered and we turned quickly to her, my hand again to weapon hilt, Kemoc’s on her shoulder.

  “You mean?” he asked, but I thought that I had the answer.

  “Seeresses ride with warriors. You need not remain here when Otkell allows us to join the Borderers!”

  “Seeresses!” she repeated with emphasis. Kemoc’s hold on her grew tighter, and then I, too, understood.

  “The Witches will not take you for training! Our parents forbade it.”

  “Our parents are no longer here to speak!” Kemoc flung at me.

  Then fear claimed us. For the training of a Witch was not like a warrior’s daily use of sword, dart gun, or axe. She went away from all those of her blood, to a distant place of mysteries, there to abide for years. When she returned she no longer recognized kin of blood, only kinship with those of her calling. If they took Kaththea from us to become one of their gray robed ranks she might be lost forever. And what Kemoc had said was very true—with Simon and the Lady Jaelithe gone, who remained who could put a strong barrier between our sister and the desires of the Council?

  Thus from that hour our life lay under a shadow. And the fear strengthened the bond between us into a tight ring. We knew each other’s feelings, though I had less skill than Kemoc and Kaththea. But days passed, and life continued as it always had. Since no fear remains sharp unless it is fed by new alarms, we relaxed.

  We did not know then that our mother had wrought for us as best she could before she departed from Estcarp. For she went to Koris and had him swear on the Axe of Volt—that supernatural weapon only he could wield and which had come to him directly from the dead hand of one who might be less than a god but who had certainly been more than human—swear that he would protect us from the wiles of the Council. Thus he took oath and we lived at Etsford as always.

  Years passed and now the raids from Karsten grew more continuous. Pagar returned to his old policy of wearing us down. He met a flat defeat in the spring of the year we counted seventeen winters behind us, the larger force he had sent going to their deaths in a pass. And in that battle Kemoc and I had a part, being numbered among the scouts who combed the ridges to harry fugitives. We found war to be a dark and ugly business, but our breed continued to survive so, and when one has no choice one turns to the sword.

  It was mid-afternoon as we cantered along a trail when the summons came. Kaththea might have stood before me, crying out in terror. For though my eyes did not see her, yet her voice rang not only in my ears, but through my body. And I heard Kemoc shout, then his mount jostled mine as I also used spurs.

  Our commander was Dermont, an exile from Karsten who had joined the Borderers when my father first organized that force. He reined around to front us. There was no expression on his dark face, but so efficiently did he block passage that even our determination was stayed.

  “What do you?” he asked.

  “We ride,” I answered, and I knew that I would cut down even him, should he hold that barrier of man and horse against us. “It is a sending—our sister is in danger!”

  His gaze searched my eyes, and he read the truth in what I said. Then he reined to the left, opening the way to us.

  “Ride!” It was both permission and an order.

  How much did he know of what chanced? If he was aware, he did not agree with it. And perchance he was willing to let us make our try, for, young as we were, we had not been the least of those who had followed him uncomplaining through hard days and weary nights.

  Ride we did, twice swapping mounts in camps where we left the impression we rode on orders. Gallop, walk, gallop, doze in the saddle in turns during the walking. A haze of time passed—too much time. Then Etsford was a shadow in a wide expanse of fields where grain had been lately harvested. What we had feared most was not to be seen—there was no sign o
f raiders. Fire and sword had not bitten here. Yet we had no lightening of our burden.

  Dimly, through the ringing in my ears, I heard the horn alert of the tower watchman as we spurred down the road, urging our weary mounts to a last burst of speed. We were white with dust but the House badge on the breasts of our surcoats could be read, and we had passed the spell barrier with no hurt, so they would know we were friends.

  My horse stumbled as we came into the court and I struggled to free my stiff feet from the stirrups and dismount before he went to his knees. Kemoc was a little before me, already staggering on his two feet to the door of the Hall.

  She was standing there, her two hands bracing her strong body so that she met us on her feet by one last effort of will. Not Kaththea, but Anghart. And at the look in her eyes Kemoc wavered to a halt, so that I charged into him, and we held to one another. My brother spoke first:

  “She is gone—they have taken her!”

  Anghart nodded—very slowly, as if the motion of her head was almost too hard an effort. Her long braids fell forward, their brown now heavily streaked with white. And her face!—she was an old woman, and a broken one, from whom all will to live had been torn. For torn it had been. This was a stroke of the Power; in that instant we both recognized it. Anghart had stood between her nursling and the will of a Witch, pitting her unaided human strength and energy against a force greater than any material weapon.

  “She—is—gone—” Her words were without inflection, gray ghosts of speech from the mouth of death. “They have set a wall about her. To ride after—is—death.”

  We did not want to believe, but belief was forced upon us. The Witches had taken our sister and shut her off from us by a force which would kill spirit and body together, should we follow. Our deaths could avail Kaththea nothing. Kemoc clutched at my arm until his nails bit into my skin. I wanted to beat back at him, smash flesh and bone—tear—rend—Perhaps the physical weakness left from our long ride was our salvation at that moment. For when Kemoc flung his arm across his face with a terrible cry and collapsed against me, his weight bore us both to the ground.